Dandelion Wine Read online

  “Those children are right,” he would have said. “They stole nothing from you, my dear. These things don’t belong to you here, you now. They belonged to her, that other you, so long ago.”

  Oh, thought Mrs. Bentley. And then, as though an ancient phonograph record had been set hissing under a steel needle, she remembered a conversation she had once had with Mr. Bentley—Mr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying, “My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You’re always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They’ll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear.”

  But Mrs. Bentley had stubbornly kept them.

  “It won’t work,” Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. “No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you’re nine, you think you’ve always been nine years old and will always be. When you’re thirty, it seems you’ve always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You’re in the present, you’re trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.”

  It had been one of the few, but gentle, disputes of their quiet marriage. He had never approved of her bric-a-brackery. “Be what you are, bury what you are not,” he had said. “Ticket stubs are trickery. Saving things is a magic trick, with mirrors.”

  If he were alive tonight, what would he say?

  “You’re saving cocoons.” That’s what he’d say. “Corsets, in a way, you can never fit again. So why save them? You can’t really prove you were ever young. Pictures? No, they lie. You’re not the picture.”

  “Affidavits?”

  “No, my dear, you’re not the dates, or the ink, or the paper. You’re not these trunks of junk and dust. You’re only you, here, now—the present you.”

  Mrs. Bentley nodded at the memory, breathing easier.

  “Yes, I see. I see.”

  The gold-feruled cane lay silently on the moonlit rug.

  “In the morning,” she said to it, “I will do something final about this, and settle down to being only me, and nobody else from any other year. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

  She slept . . .

  The morning was bright and green, and there at her door, bumping softly on the screen, were the two girls. “Got any more to give us, Mrs. Bentley? More of the little girl’s things?”

  She led them down the hall to the library.

  “Take this.” She gave Jane the dress in which she had played the mandarin’s daughter at fifteen. “And this, and this.” A kaleidoscope, a magnifying glass. “Pick anything you want,” said Mrs. Bentley. “Books, skates, dolls, everything-they’re yours.”

  “Ours?”

  “Only yours. And will you help me with a little work in the next hour? I’m building a big fire in my back yard. I’m; emptying the trunks, throwing out this trash for the trash-man. It doesn’t belong to me. Nothing ever belongs to anybody.”

  “We’ll help,” they said.

  Mrs. Bentley led the procession to the back yard, arms full, a box of matches in her hand.

  So the rest of the summer you could see the two little girls and Tom like wrens on a wire, on Mrs. Bentley’s front porch, waiting. And when the silvery chimes of the icicle man were heard, the front door opened, Mrs. Bentley floated out with her hand deep down the gullet of her silvermouthed purse, and for half an hour you could see them there on the porch, the children and the old lady putting coldness into warmness, eating chocolate icicles, laughing. At last they were good friends.

  “How old are you, Mrs. Bentley?”

  “Seventy-two.”

  “How old were you fifty years ago?”

  “Seventy-two.”

  “You weren’t ever young, were you, and never wore ribbons or dresses like these?”

  “No.”

  “Have you got a first name?”

  “My name is Mrs. Bentley.”

  “And you’ve always lived in this one house?”

  “Always.”

  “And never were pretty?”

  “Never.”

  “Never in a million trillion years?” The two girls would bend toward the old lady, and wait in the pressed silence of four o’clock on a summer afternoon.

  “Never,” said Mrs. Bentley, “in a million trillion years.”

  “You got the nickel tablet ready, Doug?”

  “Sure.” Doug licked his pencil good.

  “What you got in there so far?”

  “All the ceremonies.”

  “July Fourth and all that, dandelion-wine making and junk like bringing out the porch swing, huh?”

  “Says here, I ate the first Eskimo Pie of the summer season Tune first, 1928.”

  “That wasn’t summer, that was still spring.”

  “It was a ‘first’ anyway, so I put it down. Bought those new tennis shoes June twenty-fifth. Went barefoot in the grass June twenty-sixth Busy, busy, busy, heck! Well, what you got to report this time, Tom? A new first, a fancy ceremony of some sort to do with vacation like creek-crab catching or water-strider-spider grabbing?”

  “Nobody ever grabbed a water-strider-spider in his life. You ever know anybody grabbed a water-strider-spider? Go ahead, think!”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Well?”

  “You’re right. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever will, I guess. They’re just too fast.”

  “It’s not that they’re fast. They just don’t exist,” said Tom. He thought about it and nodded. “That’s right, they just never did exist at all. Well, what I got to report is this.”

  He leaned over and whispered in his brother’s ear. Douglas wrote it.

  They both looked at it.

  “I’ll be darned!” said Douglas. “I never thought of that. That’s brilliant! It’s true. Old people never were children!” “And it’s kind of sad,” said Tom, sitting still. “There’s nothing we can do to help them.”

  Seems like the town is full of machines . . . ’ said Douglas, running. “Mr. Auffmann and his Happiness Machine, Miss Fern and Miss Roberta and their Green Machine. Now, Charlie, what you handing me?”

  “A Time Machine!” panted Charlie Woodman, pacing him. “Mother’s, scout’s, Injun’s honor!”

  “Travels in the past and future?” John Huff asked, easily circling them.

  “Only in the past, but you can’t have everything. Here we are.”

  Charlie Woodman pulled up at a hedge.

  Douglas peered in at the old house. “Heck, that’s Colonel Freeleigh’s place. Can’t be no Time Machine in there. He’s no inventor, and if he was, we’d known about an important thing like a Time Machine years ago.”

  Charlie and John tiptoed up the front-porch steps. Douglas snorted and shook his head, staying at the bottom of: the steps.

  “Okay, Douglas,” said Charlie. “Be a knucklehead. Sure, Colonel Freeleigh didn’t invent this Time Machine. But he’s got a proprietary interest in it, and it’s been here all the time. We were too darned dumb to notice! So long, Douglas Spaulding, to you!”

  Charlie took John’s elbow as though he was escorting a lady, opened the front-porch screen and went in. The screen door did not slam.

  Douglas had caught the screen and was following silently.

  Charlie walked across the enclosed porch, knocked, and opened the inside door. They all peered down a long dark hall toward a room that was lit like an undersea grotto, soft green, dim, and watery.

  “Colonel Freeleigh?”

  Silence.

  “He don’t hear so good,” whispered Charlie. “But he told me to just come on in and yell. Colonel!”

  The only answer was the dust sifting down and around the spiral stairwell from above. Then there was a faint stir in that undersea chamber at the far end of the hall.

  They moved carefully along and peered into room wh
ich contained but two pieces of furniture-an old man and a chair. They resembled each other, both so thin you could see just how they had been put together, ball and socket, sinew and joint. The rest of the room was raw floor boards, naked walls and ceiling, and vast quantities of silent air.

  “He looks dead,” whispered Douglas.

  “No, he’s just thinking up new places to travel to,” said Charlie, very proud and quiet. “Colonel?”

  One of the pieces of brown furniture moved and it was the colonel, blinking around, focusing, and smiling a wild and toothless smile. “Charlie!”

  “Colonel, Doug and John here came to—”

  “Welcome, boys; sit down, sit down!”

  The boys sat, uneasily, on the floor.

  “But where’s the—” said Douglas. Charlie jabbed his ribs quickly.

  “Where’s the what?” asked Colonel Freeleigh.

  “Where’s the point in us talking, he means.” Charlie grimaced at Douglas, then smiled at the old man. “We got nothing to say. Colonel, you say something.”

  “Beware, Charlie, old men only lie in wait for people to’ ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft.”

  “Ching Ling Soo,” suggested Charlie casually.

  “Eh?” said the colonel.

  “Boston,” Charlie prompted, “1910.”

  “Boston, 1910 . . .” The colonel frowned. “Why, Ching Ling Soo, of course!” “Yes, sir, Colonel.”

  “Let me see, now . . .” The colonel’s voice murmured, it drifted away on serene lake waters. “Let me see . . .”

  The boys waited.

  Colonel Freeleigh closed his eyes.

  “October first, 1910, a calm cool fine autumn night, the Boston Variety Theatre, yes, there it is. Full house, all waiting. Orchestra, fanfare, curtain! Ching Ling Soo, the great Oriental Magician! There he is, on stage! And there I am, front row center! ‘The Bullet Trick!’ he cries. ‘Volunteers!’ The man next to me goes up. ‘Examine the rifle!’ says Ching. ‘Mark the bullet!’ says he. ‘Now fire this marked bullet from this rifle, using my face for a target, and,’ says Ching, ‘at the far end of the stage I will catch the bullet in my teeth!’”

  Colonel Freeleigh took a deep breath and paused.

  Douglas was staring at him, half puzzled, half in awe. John Huff and Charlie were completely lost. Now the old man went on, his head and body frozen, only his lips moving.

  “‘Ready, aim, fire!’ cries Ching Ling Soo. Bang! The rifle cracks. Bang! Ching Ling Soo shrieks, he staggers, he falls, his face all red. Pandemonium. Audience on its feet. Something wrong with the rifle. ‘Dead,’ someone says. And they’re right. Dead. Horrible, horrible . . . I’ll always remember . . . his face a mask of red, the curtain coming down fast and the women weeping . . .1910 . . . Boston . . . Variety Theatre . . . poor man . . .

  Colonel Freeleigh slowly opened his eyes.

  “Boy, Colonel,” said Charlie, “that was fine. Now how about Pawnee Bill?”

  “Pawnee Bill . . . ?”

  “And the time you was on the prairie way back in ’75.”

  “Pawnee Bill . . .” The colonel moved into darkness. “Eighteen seventy-five . . .yes, me and Pawnee Bill on a little rise in the middle of the prairie, waiting. ‘Shh!’ says Pawnee Bill. ‘Listen.’ The prairie like a big stage all set for the storm to come. Thunder. Soft. Thunder again. Not so soft. And across that prairie as far as the eye could see this big ominous yellow-dark cloud full of black lightning, somehow sunk to earth, fifty miles wide, fifty miles long, a mile high, and no more than an inch off the ground. ‘Lord!’ I cried, ‘Lord!’—from up on my hill—‘lord!’ the earth pounded like a mad heart, boys, a heart gone to panic. My bones shook fit to break. The earth shook: rat-a-tat rat-a-tat, boom! Rumble. That’s a rare word: rumble. Oh, how that mighty storm rumbled along down, up, and over the rises, and all you could see was the cloud and nothing inside. ‘That’s them!’ cried Pawnee Bill. And the cloud was dust! Not vapors or rain, no, but prairie dust flung up from the tinder-dry grass like fine corn meal, like pollen all blazed with sunlight now, for the sun had come out. I shouted again! Why? Because in all that hell-fire filtering dust now a veil moved aside and I saw them, I swear it! The grand army of the ancient prairie: the bison, the buffalo!”

  The colonel let the silence build, then broke it again.

  “Heads like giant Negroes’ fists, bodies like locomotives! Twenty, fifty, two hundred thousand iron missiles shot out of the west, gone off the track and flailing cinders, their eyes like blazing coals, rumbling toward oblivion!

  “I saw that the dust rose up and for a little while showed me that sea of humps, of dolloping manes, black shaggy waves rising, falling . . .‘Shoot!’ says Pawnee Bill. ‘Shoot!’ And I cock and aim. ‘Shoot’ he says. And I stand there feeling like God’s right hand, looking at the great vision of strength and violence going by, going by, midnight at noon, like a glinty funeral train all black and long and sad and forever and you don’t fire at a funeral train, now do you, boys? do you? All I wanted then was for the dust to sink again and cover the black shapes of doom which pummeled and jostled on in great burdensome commotions. And, boys, the dust came down. The cloud hid the million feet that were drumming up the thunder and dusting out the storm. I heard Pawnee Bill curse and hit my arm. But I was glad I hadn’t touched that cloud or the power within that cloud with so much as a pellet of lead. I just wanted to stand watching time bundle by in great trundlings all hid by the storm the bison made and carried with them toward eternity.

  “An hour, three hours, six, it took for the storm to pass on away over the horizon toward less kind men than me. Pawnee Bill was gone, I stood alone, stone deaf. I walked all numb through a town a hundred miles south and heard not the voices of men and was satisfied not to hear. For a little while I wanted to remember the thunder. I hear it still, on summer afternoons like this when the rain shapes over the lake; a fearsome, wondrous sound . . .one I wish you might have heard . . .”

  The dim light filtered through Colonel Freeleigh’s nose which was large and like white porcelain which cupped a very thin and tepid orange tea indeed.

  “Is he asleep?” asked Douglas at last.

  “No,” said Charlie. “Just recharging his batteries.”

  Colonel Freeleigh breathed swiftly, softly, as if he’d run a long way. At last he opened his eyes.

  “Yes, sir” said Charlie, in admiration.

  “Hello Charlie.” The colonel smiled at the boys puzzledly.

  “That’s Doug and that’s John,” said Charlie.

  “How-de-do, boys.”

  The boys said hello.

  “But—” said Douglas. “Where is the—?”

  “My gosh, you’re dumb!” Charlie jabbed Douglas in the arm. He turned to the colonel. “You were saying, sir?”

  “Was I?” murmured the old man.

  “The Civil War,” suggested John Huff quietly. “Does he remember that?”

  “Do I remember?” said the colonel. “Oh, I do, I do!” His voice trembled as he shut up his eyes again. “Everything! Except . . .which side I fought on . . .”

  “The color of your uniform—” Charlie began.

  “Colors begin to run on you,” whispered the colonel. “it’s gotten hazy. I see soldiers with me, but a long time ago 1 stopped seeing color in their coats or caps. I was born in Illinois, raised in Virginia, married in New York, built a house in Tennessee and now, very late, here I am, good Lord, back in Green Town. So you see why the colors run and blend . . .”

  “But you remember which side of hills you fought on?” Charlie did not raise his voice. “Did the sun rise on your left or right? Did you march toward Canada or Mexico?”

  “Seems some mornings the sun rose on my good right hand, some mornings over my left shoulder. We marched all directions. It’s most seventy years since. You forget suns and mornings that long past.”

  “You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somew
here?”

  “No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns. But I don’t suppose that’s the kind of victory you boys mean for me to talk on.”

  “Antietam,” said John Huff. “Ask about Antietam.”

  “I was there.”

  The boys’ eyes grew bright. “Bull Run, ask him Bull Run . . .”

  “I was there.” Softly.

  “What about Shiloh?”

  “There’s never been a year in my life I haven’t thought, what a lovely name and what a shame to see it only on battle records.”

  “Shiloh, then. Fort Sumter?”

  “I saw the first puffs of powder smoke.” A dreaming voice. “So many things come back, oh, so many things. T remember songs. ‘AU’s quiet along the Potomac tonight, where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming; their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon, or the light of the watchfire, are gleaming. Remember, remember . . . ‘AU quiet along the Potomac tonight; no sound save the rush of the river; while soft falls the dew on the face of the dead—the picket’s off duty forever!’ . . . After the surrender, Mr. Lincoln, on the White House balcony asked the band to play, ‘Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land.’ . . . And then there was the Boston lady who one night wrote a song will last a thousand years: ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Late nights I feel my mouth move singing back in another time. ‘Ye Cavaliers of Dixie! Who guard the Southern shores . . .’ ‘When the boys come home in triumph, brother, with the laurels they shall gain . . .’ So many songs, sung on both sides, blowing north, blowing south on the night winds. ‘We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more . . .’ ‘Tenting tonight, tenting tonight, tenting on the old camp ground.’ ‘Hurrah, hurrah, we bring the Jubilee, hurrah, hurrah, the flag that makes us free . . .”